Piva Modern Italian: Pastas & pizzas in New Westminster
Piva Modern Italian is a contemporary Italian restaurant located in New Westminster. They focus on rustic-modern Italian cuisine and fresh ingredients in all their dishes. I came here as part of a team dinner.
Interior
I really like the style of the space. It has a lot of pendant lighting and stylish gold accents. The ceilings are high and seating is comfortable.
The restaurant gets pretty busy at dinner time and it may be hard to put your coat on one of their very few coat racks.
Drinks
We order mocktails because we are technically at a work event. I order the berry mojito ($5.50), a classic fruity drink with some minty flavour. However, I think I prefer the drinks my co-workers ordered – the Tsucan sunset ($4.50).
Appetizers
We order some appetizers to share and every person gets their own entree. Piva also has a seasonal menu that changes throughout the year.
I am also happy to say they give us free bread in the true Italian spirit.
Arancini ($14)
Arancini are risotto balls and risotto is delicious. Putting them into a ball and frying it is genius.
Piva’s arancinis are filled with wild mushroom, mozzarella and truffle aioli. They are SUPER yummy and lots of cheesy goodness inside.
Sadly, there are only 3 on the plate, which I think is pricey for $14.
Carpaccio ($16)
The carpaccio looks decent in pictures even though you may wonder what that potato chip is doing in the middle. This actually enticed me to order it because I love chips so much.
On this plate are beef carpaccio (thinly sliced meat), truffle aioli, arugula and waffle-cut fried potatos (aka chips…).
The beef carpaccio is a little too thin – can be hard to pick up with your fork. But it is still delicious. The truffle aioli is amazing even though I do not think they use real truffle, and I surprisingly like using the waffle cut potato to eat the beef with. Unfortunately, there are only a few so for the rest you’ll have to just eat it without.
Portion size is good to share with 2 people.
Main
Some of my coworkers order pasta or pizza, but I went with a meat entree.
Duck ($34)
Here we have an oven-roasted duck breast in Frangelico reduction, mashed potato, cauliflower puree and sauteed spinach.
This entree is quite large and I have a hard time finishing it given we had appetizers earlier. I find the duck hard to cut with my knife, but maybe I just suck at cutting stuff. There is definitely a lot of duck meat for your money.
I like the mashed potato and I think the cauliflower puree is very interesting in combination with everything else. The sauteed spinach is what it is lol.
Final thoughts
Overall, I will return to Piva Modern Italian. I think the location is central and convenient (even though there is like zero free parking…) and I really like the space.
The appetizers were all very yummy. Some of them I did not include because I have no pictures, but we also tried their crab cakes ($17) and cauliflower ($10). The arancini stood out to me but I don’t think it’s worth the price.
As for the main, I’ve had way better duck (-cough- Le Crocodile) so I would not be ordering this dish again. But I am interested in trying out their pastas and pizzas. All the portions for the pastas, pizzas and mains seem to be reasonable. The pizzas can definitely be shared between 2-3 people.
Piva Modern Italian is a fast rising local hot spot in New Westminster and is also conveniently located beside Anvil Center as well as the skytrain station.
Sincerely, Loewe